SOMETHING, surely, sets us humans apart. We share 90-odd per cent of our DNA with mice, yet our intelligence is unique. We stand alone as the animal that acts on deliberation and conscious forethought – or so we’d like to believe.
But consider this. A few years ago, Yale University psychologist and colleagues asked volunteers to fill out questionnaires designed to “prime” some of them with words linked to the elderly, such as “Florida”, “sentimental” and “wrinkle”. Afterwards, the researchers timed how long it took participants to walk down a hallway, and found that those who had been primed walked more slowly than those who hadn’t.
Psychologists have amassed volumes of data showing that what we do, and how we do it, can be influenced by seemingly irrelevant environmental details. The evidence is so striking that some suggest consciousness may be unnecessary for explaining most human behaviour. That may be going too far, but in , computer scientist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology presents ample evidence that the idea is more plausible than one might think – and that technology may soon play a revolutionary part in putting human behavioural science on firmer ground.
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If we respond unconsciously to words on paper, as Bargh’s study showed, it’s hardly surprising that we also respond to gestures or body language. This has been known for decades, but now Pentland and colleagues at the have pioneered technology to make the study of such influences more objective. Using which monitor people’s voice patterns and movements, they have found that they can measure and record specific “social signals” that turn out to predict much of what we do, from the outcome of a job interview to the success of a first date.
In one experiment, Pentland’s team had business students take part in lengthy negotiations and then recount what happened. The participants talked in terms of strategy and claimed that the outcome hung on dramatic developments late in the negotiations. However, Pentland’s group found that by looking at just the first five minutes of sensor data, they could predict with 87 per cent accuracy who would win.
This result came from analysing not what people said, but how they said it – variations in tone and amplitude, for example. The implication of this experiment and many others like it, which the book describes in detail, is that people interact through a hidden channel of communication every bit as important as the verbal one. According to Pentland, this is rooted in the fact that our facility for language evolved on top of a pre-existing neural capacity for non-verbal communications – dominance displays and the like – which we share with other animals.
“We interact through a hidden channel of communication”
Some social cues, Pentland suggests, are “honest signals” in that they are difficult to fake and therefore provide “a window into our intentions, goals and values”. For instance, a person’s activity within a conversation – not only how much he or she gestures and speaks but also the precise details of amplitude and frequency – gives an honest signal of his or her level of interest. Mimicry – how much one person copies the gestures of another – is an honest signal of empathy. Bringing honest signals into the spotlight should help researchers understand group behaviour much more clearly.
Technology now appears set to alter our understanding of why we do what we do, by exposing a hugely influential channel of communication that has long remained hidden. That may be a little disturbing. But if it is not deliberation and forethought that make us unique, perhaps it is our unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding.
Honest Signals: How they shape our world
MIT Press